History is about to accelerate. The world financial crisis broke a decade ago. Like car crash victims dazed by the impact, the working-class, poor and young people who continue to suffer have had little coherent response, largely due to the lack of bold leadership needed from trade unions and many other workers’ and left organisations.

But now, mass sentiment for an alternative to the capitalist system which caused the crash is emerging. New political movements have developed – looking to Bernie Sanders in the US, Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France, AMLO in Mexico. Social movements for women’s rights and against profit-driven austerity. Workplace battles too, against redundancies, low pay, casualisation, high workload and outsourcing.

Meanwhile, scuffles break out in the ranks of the bosses’ politicians and institutions – Trump’s trade threats, Britain’s Brexit negotiations and more.

There is an opportunity to significantly step up the process towards breaking up the old capitalist order. To install a system that works for the working and middle classes, young people and the poor – and for artists, and those who want to take part in the arts.

The Bad Art project fights for socialism: a world based on public ownership, and democratic planning of production, distribution and exchange to guarantee plenty for all. We believe that only socialist revolutionary change can achieve this in full and forever.

Eighty years ago the world was entering another great opening. Then, too, there was a gap between what was necessary to defeat capitalist catastrophe and workers’ general political understanding.

However, in that period of revolution and counterrevolution, class consciousness and broad socialist understanding was at a higher level than today in most of the world. As part of this, the Third International, despite having become an instrument of Stalin and the bureaucratic elite in the Kremlin, was a big pole of attraction to workers and left-moving artists and intelligentsia everywhere, due to the authority of the Russian revolution. However, the newly founded Fourth International, representing genuine revolutionary socialism and workers’ democracy, was also a pole of attraction to the most politically advanced workers and middle-class layers appalled by the Stalinist dictatorship as well as by capitalism and fascism.

It was in this context that Leon Trotsky, co-leader of the Russian revolution, drafted 1938’s ‘Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art’ – aimed at the best class-conscious artists and writers, and a section of the intelligentsia, as well as workers and youth interested in the arts.

Of course, like Lenin’s Bolsheviks had, Trotsky’s Fourth International aimed to articulate and link up the desires and demands of workers in a way they all could comprehend and organise struggle towards. Its goal was to draw all combative workers, whether convinced of revolution yet or not, into the conflict with capitalism. But there was also an opening to win artists to this struggle.

Artists inspired by the revolutionary promise of 1917 were rightly repulsed by the stifling growth of Stalinism which imprisoned the arts in bureaucracy-sanctioned style and content. Some were attracted, therefore, to Trotsky’s principled struggle.

This declaration aimed at a part of the intelligentsia outraged at the suffocation of the arts by fascism on the one hand and Stalinism on the other. “Every progressive tendency in art is destroyed by fascism as ‘degenerate’. Every free creation is called ‘fascist’ by the Stalinists.”

The Manifesto sought to organise this anger; to “find a common ground on which all revolutionary writers and artists may be reunited, the better to serve the revolution by their art and to defend the liberty of that art itself against the usurpers of the revolution.”

So, along with the French surrealist André Breton and the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera – Trotsky’s host in exile in Mexico – he drafted the Manifesto. This appealed to artists to join the struggle against both Stalinism and capitalism. “Our aims: the independence of art – for the revolution. The revolution – for the complete liberation of art!” We also reprinted this in full in the 2017 issue of Bad Art, along with a more detailed examination of its historical context.

The situation today is different. Artists still form a section of the intelligentsia, but in comparison to 1938 artists come from – and stay or end up in – many different backgrounds. No longer are they drawn solely from the middle and upper layers of society. There has always been ‘folk art’, of course. But the person who lives, or desires to live, from or for the arts, appears more and more in the ranks of the working class.

And furthermore, there is a memory in the advanced capitalist countries of the long post-war capitalist economic boom, and the reforms workers’ struggle won during it. That was a period when working-class and young people had the time, facilities and financial support to pursue some kind of artistic life, perhaps the major factor in artists appearing from and in all class backgrounds. The destruction of that promise before the eyes of us all is leading to huge frustration.

But there is also no world organisation today with the revolutionary authority of Leon Trotsky or the Fourth International which can appeal directly to those artists who do still exist in the upper layers of society – let alone the mass of working and middle-class artists. To reach and organise the artists – and the arts lovers in the working class – requires more than a declaration for artistic freedom. We need a programme.

In 1938, Trotsky also drafted ‘The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International’, commonly called the ‘Transitional Programme’, as the Fourth International’s core raft of demands. The approach of these ‘transitional demands’ was to take the demands which arise from workers’ daily struggles, and link them to each other and the struggle for socialism. To explain why this struggle is necessary, how workers can win it, and so draw them into it.

With all of this in mind, Bad Art proposes here some headline transitional demands: a contribution towards a programme in the arts. These demands are not a finished programme for the arts, but a first step in a discussion in that direction. And they should only be seen in the context of a general transitional programme for socialism.

Access

Arts to be taught as central in all schools – for a balanced, rounded-out curriculum including academic, artistic and practical subjects of every kind

Free education at all levels, including in artistic and vocational training

Free admittance to all museums and galleries, including special exhibitions. For subsidies for tickets to arts and cultural events and democratic controls on prices at the most expensive international venues like Broadway and the West End

Reduction in the working week without loss of pay, and trade union struggle for a minimum wage which is a real living wage, to allow time and means for leisure pursuits

Community workshop, rehearsal and exhibition facilities, free or very cheap (nominal fee only) in every major neighbourhood, proportionate to the size of the population. For subsidised instruments, paints and other arts materials

No to ‘pay to play’! Scrap all performance and exhibition charges! A decent wage or fee, decided democratically by artists’ unions or assemblies, to be paid for all professional artistic work. Engagers who say they can’t afford it: open the books to inspection by artists’ unions or assemblies! Big businesses who pay with ‘exposure’ – cough up! Small businesses who struggle like we do – for public subsidy to cover our costs!

Massive increase in public arts funding for all types of artistic project, including living grants to allow workers and artists to develop art outside the established channels and institutions. For funding decisions based on maximising variety, development, provision and diversity, not the profit model or elitist notions of ‘excellence’

A building programme of arts venues including theatres, concert halls and galleries, run and programmed by elected committees of local residents, workers and artists, to fill gaps in provision and bring the full spectrum of the arts to all.

No to gentrification! Plan urban environments democratically based on the needs of residents and workers, not the profits of the voracious tourism industry. For democratically decided rent controls to allow artists and workers to stay and improve the areas they live in

For democratic, community-led arts in every locality. Develop disused ‘brownfield’ areas by including spaces for artists, with the resources to make them safe and cheap to run. Encourage working-class community arts spaces. Open up the streets – for democratically planned arts areas, with space for graffiti artists, buskers and others, embedded in the community

Nationalise ‘big art’ – the giant theatre, cinema, publishing and TV groups; the top record labels and streaming services; the international auction houses; the billion-dollar private collections locked away in vaults – with compensation paid only on the basis of proven need. No to the dictatorship of the money men and advertisers! For fair and democratic access to all groups in society, on the basis of democratic workers’ control and management. For the return of stolen treasures to their countries of origin, and planned sharing of the world’s treasures, on the basis of workers’ democracy and internationalism

Freedom

No to all censorship! Down with political interference in art by the state! End censorship, police intimidation and harassment. For the right to produce art critical of society – for the right to produce every sort of art. Artists producing openly reactionary work, however, should not expect to go unchallenged by artists’ and workers’ trade unions and socialists

End bullying and sexual harassment – Weinstein: never again! Take the power to hire and fire away from the impresarios! For public ownership of the biggest arts businesses under democratic workers’ control and management. For public investment to create more jobs in the arts in every area. For a living wage for all and living benefits without compulsion

End stereotyping and persecution of all oppressed groups. No to discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, sexuality or any other form of oppression. Scrap all laws and practices which enforce or permit this. Struggle for the resources and democratic access to tell every untold story

Organisation

Artists, go to the workers! For artists to support all the struggles of our sister and brother workers, and appeal to them for support in our own struggles. For artists to build and take part in trade unions and workers’ parties

For fighting unions. Where there is a genuine trade union for your work, join it. Where its leadership is not leading a fightback, demand it. Where that leadership acts as a barrier, organise to change it

For collectives of struggle. Also seek out other artists and workers who are struggling like you are. Form collective campaigns that can put forward demands to improve the situation. Apply the tactics of demonstrations, lobbies, boycotts and strikes to achieve them. Fight to save every arts service! Fight to win more! Coordinate with Bad Art – send us reports!

For mass workers’ parties. For mass, democratic workers’ parties in every country that aim to bring together the struggles of all workers, artists, young people and the oppressed. Capitalism is the common cause of our woes – for these parties to adopt a fighting, socialist programme!

For socialism! For an end capitalism around the world, and all the exploitation and oppression that comes with it. Replace it with a society based on public ownership of the banks and big monopolies, under democratic workers’ control and management, with a socialist plan of production. For genuine workers’ democracy and internationalism

]]>http://badartworld.net/index.php/2018/08/13/a-contribution-towards-a-programme-for-the-arts/feed/0Victory! Great Exhibition of the North – no to arms, yes to arts!http://badartworld.net/index.php/2018/03/08/victory-great-exhibition-of-the-north-no-to-arms-yes-to-arts/
http://badartworld.net/index.php/2018/03/08/victory-great-exhibition-of-the-north-no-to-arms-yes-to-arts/#commentsThu, 08 Mar 2018 13:43:31 +0000http://badartworld.net/?p=2055

Artists have beaten big business after forcing arms manufacturer BAE Systems to pull out of the upcoming ‘Great Exhibition of the North’ arts festival in England.

Two acts – Nadine Shah and the Commoners Choir – cancelled their slots in protest against the British multinational’s involvement. Meanwhile, other Great Exhibition acts raised concerns and sought to negotiate a situation which excluded BAE from funding or participating in their event.

Bad Art stands in solidarity with all artists exercising their democratic right to protest, including by withdrawing their labour, in opposition to imperialist war and its big businesses beneficiaries.

Vicious, profit-driven austerity has left many arts organisations reliant on the ‘sponsorship’ or ‘philanthropy’ of big business. Grassroots arts funding has all but disappeared, with local councils slashing culture budgets by £236 million a year, on top of Arts Council England losing about £267 million a year.

Working-class artists – and audiences – are the losers. The only winners are the tiny elite of big business owners whose tax breaks the cuts pay for, and whose bottom lines are fattened by privatisation schemes. Bad Art opposes all austerity and privatisation.

Councils can fight back, however. Right-wing councillors – including the right wing of the Labour Party – say there is no choice but to pass on central government cuts. The arts are an easy target: in 2013, Westminster Council cut its arts budget by 100%.

But there is no legal barrier to using councils’ reserves and borrowing powers to balance the books and stop the cuts now. This could show workers and local residents the huge impact well-funded public services can have. From there, councils could use their resources and platforms, linking up with trade unions, to build a campaign.

Fight for the Tories to give the money back! The present government is a minority government and split on multiple issues. The Panama and Paradise Papers prove the money is there. Take the wealth off the super-rich! Tories and Blairites out!

BAE Systems claimed its involvement meant to encourage young people to take up careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Bad Art would welcome genuine initiatives to open up opportunities and advancement in the sciences as well as the arts.

But why is this job left to the dealers of death? Where is the public money for socially useful research and technological improvement?

There is another way. In 1976, unionised workers at arms company Lucas Aerospace faced the threat of mass redundancies. They responded with a plan to save all the jobs: retooling their facilities to produce socially useful products, including medical equipment and public transport.

In spite of determined industrial action, the ‘Lucas Plan’ did not become the company’s model. But it shows how the huge creative and productive resources capitalism exploits for the profit of a tiny elite could instead be planned to provide for all.

Bad Art stands for public ownership of big business, under democratic workers’ control and the democratic management of workers and service users. A socialist plan of production, on the basis of international collaboration, could eliminate the driving forces behind war with no loss of jobs – and allow massive expansion of art and science funding.

Pulling out of a show can pose a real dilemma for artists. For newer acts, the dilemma can be compounded by the cutthroat competition for funding and recognition which austerity has only exacerbated.

And none of us wants to disappoint an audience, who may have made travel or leave commitments, or shelled out on greedy promoters’ extortionate ticket prices.

If any audiences had been put out of pocket, the blame would lie squarely with BAE Systems and the festival organisers. In such a situation, Bad Art says management must as a minimum offer fans the options of a transfer or full refund.

This victory shows that protest works – especially when backed by the threat of withdrawal of labour. Artists and workers have real power, in particular when we take collective action.

Bad Art salutes the acts who campaigned for this. We back any efforts by artists and audiences to combat the corporatisation of the arts, and PR or recruitment exercises by warmongers.

In the last week of February 2018 I was invited in my capacity as northern England coordinator for the Bad Art project to speak at three separate meetings. These were in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire; Moston, north Manchester; and Liverpool.

All the meetings were advertised as a Marxist artist from Bad Art who would explain not only the project’s objectives but also how its aims link directly to fighting back against the impact on the arts of ongoing austerity cuts. This was with particular reference to northern England working-class communities.

The first event in Huddersfield was organised by the Socialist Party. This meeting took place at a time when the local Labour council, with £120 million in reserves, was scandalously putting through policies involving cutting jobs and public services.

At this meeting I said the creative arts industries earn the UK economy £10 million an hour, according to the government’s own figures, and employ nearly two million people.

And yet despite massive profits being made by big business owners, the vast majority of those employed in the industry earnt, according to a survey of its members by Artists Union England, less than £10,000 per year – or less than two-thirds the average wage. Many had to work for free at some time, and still a large proportion of these artists and other workers in the industry worked without employment contracts.

Compounding this problem is a regional imbalance in arts funding. £69 per person is invested in the arts in London, compared to under £5 in other regions, according to the 2013 report ‘Rebalancing Our Cultural Capital’.

Huddersfield: working class deprived of art

The comments from the audience detailing how cuts had impacted them in regard to the arts and their communities were shocking!

One young woman explained how the parents of youngsters in nurseries were being asked to pay an extra £10 per week to provide paper and crayons for the children to draw on! Her partner pointed out that despite his love for listening to music, after a hard working day on building sites, in the evening, he was just too tired to function.

One local school was actually charging its pupils to study GCSE art. Another student pointed out that as well as his £40,000 debts on leaving university, his involvement in a band had to end because they had nowhere they could rehearse.

There were many other comments. Music lessons are not now taking place in schools. Car park prices and entrance fees are so high that pensioners and those on low incomes cannot attend local exhibitions. Art resources are too costly to buy. Vitally needed creative courses used in therapy have been stopped. And the stresses and strains of everyday life are destroying any effort at personal creativity, such as writing poetry.

What was clear throughout this meeting was how the arts, in many differing ways, are an essential part of enriching working class people’s lives. There was an excellent and positive response to the ideas put forward by Bad Art for bringing together artists, trade unionists, community groups and others wishing to defend the arts, whether as spectators or creators.

Our call for opposition to cuts in the arts to be linked to fighting back against cuts and privatisation generally, and the need to fight for bold socialist policies both locally and internationally, was also enthusiastically received.

Moston: artists and workers, unite and fight!

There was a similar response at the Moston Miners Community Arts Centre. This was a public event organised as an ‘Art of Resistance’ evening. I was invited to speak first to the audience before local bands, spoken word artists and videos.

I laid out Bad Art’s reasons for being formed and some of the actions we propose. But here I focussed on the importance of artists joining up and linking their struggles with the labour and trade union movement.

I explained that artists getting involved in socialist politics must not mean any sort of censorship or interference in their creative actions. Here I was able to highlight in the most recent Bad Art journal Trotsky’s ‘Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art’, written in 1938. In it he states: “The revolution must build a socialist regime with centralised control – but to develop intellectual creation an anarchist regime of individual liberty from the first should be established.”

I explained that austerity measures are an unnecessary political act carried out by the Tories and right wing of Labour that indiscriminately penalises working-class communities in order to benefit the profits of a few. In other words to prop up capitalism.

I contrasted the billions of pounds that have been paid to bail out the bankers, or on nuclear weapons, and how despite Theresa May saying there is no “magic money tree,” she had found £1 billion to bribe the reactionary Democratic Unionist Party to prop up the Tories’ minority government.

I also pointed out the millions of pounds in corporation tax that major companies had not paid, and how the NHS is being fleeced by private business interests. In other words, the money is there, but we need a different sort of system, democratically planned to meet the majority of people’s needs not maintain the wealth and privileges of a tiny few.

In other words, the fight to protect the arts, and the fight to defend communities against austerity, is the fight for a change of the political and economic system: the fight for socialism.

Liverpool: capitalism v the arts

This theme continued at the Socialist Party-organised meeting in the 2008 European Capital of Culture, Liverpool. Here the discussion became very extensive and wide-ranging.

Once again the prohibitive museum and gallery entrance fees were commented upon, both in Britain and abroad, which effectively prohibit, working-class people from attending. The absurd situation of the British Royal family owning millions of pounds’ worth of art collections never made available for the public to see was also highlighted.

Younger and older workers pointed out how austerity had severely impacted on vital social provisions, making life so much harder for those at the sharp end. This was shockingly evident on one of the coldest nights of the year, with snow falling, where we saw so many homeless people begging on the streets or making cardboard homes or tents on derelict land.

Despite many well-meaning music festivals and the like held to “raise awareness” about such issues as global warming, world poverty, Aids and racism, these problems are still occurring – because the root cause, capitalism, has not been addressed.

The discussion also ranged over topics such as what is art? What is an artist? Is there such a thing as working-class art?

But my concluding points were that – as artists such as grime musician Stormzy are starting to understand – the numerous strikes and other battles waged by artists and cultural workers around the world show the battle to defend the arts is indisputably political.

The fight to defend our communities against austerity requires united action from workers and young people including artists, trade unions, community campaigns and socialists. The importance of building mass parties of the working-class with socialist policies becomes even more vital if we in Britain and internationally are to open up the arts and provide the resources, time and materials required for all to fully embrace them, whether as participants or spectators.

Art should enrich all of our lives, not just the wealthy few who have commodified creativity to be bought and sold. Bad Art’s message was enthusiastically embraced by all those who attended these successful meetings. It’s a great start and a positive pointer to action in the future.

Peter Harris is a surrealist artist and retired teacher based in Lancashire, northern England.

]]>http://badartworld.net/index.php/2018/03/01/bad-art-northern-england-mini-tour-finds-appetite-for-a-fightback/feed/0No to Spanish state repression of artists! For artistic freedom from censorship and capitalism!http://badartworld.net/index.php/2018/03/01/no-to-spanish-state-repression-of-artists-for-artistic-freedom-from-censorship-and-capitalism/
http://badartworld.net/index.php/2018/03/01/no-to-spanish-state-repression-of-artists-for-artistic-freedom-from-censorship-and-capitalism/#commentsThu, 01 Mar 2018 14:09:27 +0000http://badartworld.net/?p=2023

Over recent weeks, the Spanish state and the capitalist class it represents have again shown their true repressive nature.

Thy have jailed Mallorcan rapper Josep Miquel Arenas Beltrán, known as ‘Valtònyc’, for over three years over his songs. The courts found his music glorified terrorism, committed slander, defamed the crown (“lèse-majesté”) and included threatening lyrics.

During the same period, the conceptual artist Santiago Sierra had his artwork ‘Contemporary Spanish Political Prisoners’ withdrawn from the Arco fair in Madrid before anyone had a chance to see it. As stated by organisers, “the fair understands that the controversy that the exhibition of these pieces has caused in the media is damaging the visibility of the rest of the art displayed.”

These are just the latest attacks on artistic freedom of expression in the Spanish state, added to repressive laws over recent years, the violence of October 1, the imposition of ‘article 155’ in Catalonia and accompanying Jailings. These attacks should be a clear reminder to all that fear and violence are the capitalists’ ultimate answer to the crisis of their system.

The artistic community must answer these attacks. It must not become the accepted norm that intimidation and censorship silence artists and political action.

These attacks must be a call to artists, workers and young people to renew the struggle to bring down the right-wing Partido Popular government in Madrid, and the repressive social system it represents.

They are scared of artists and the voice of opposition that we can create – especially if we link that to the wider social movements and struggles that exploded in 2017 in particular. Why else would they send out these signals of repression?

We must answer these attacks with an avalanche of anti-establishment art – and most importantly, by organising protest actions that expose the corruption of the system and help to build a movement to end it.

We must fight not only against attacks on freedom of expression, but on all issues that affect us – like affordable spaces, proper payment and rights for our work, and the precarious existence that we live with.

Not all art, of course, lends itself to political messages. In Bad Art we are often not ‘political artists’ as such, but we are artists that are politicised.

We mobilise and organise as artists and workers, using our skills to fight for our rights, and alongside the working class and youth against all exploitation and oppression. We believe it necessary to end the capitalist system that often crushes the artistic spirit, and replace it with a socialist society.

Bad Art is an international project bringing together socialist artists. This year we are commemorating the 80th anniversary of André Breton, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky’s ‘Manifesto: towards a free revolutionary art’. For this we will be organising events and actions around Bad Art’s main themes of struggle: access, freedom and organisation.

We encourage you to contact us, and get involved. Join with us yourself, or link your collectives with us. Artists must not stand alone. Solidarity and mobilisation can push back repression.

A call to action!

They met in Mexico, 1938. Leon Trotsky, co-leader of the Russian revolution, André Breton, co-founder of the Surrealist movement, and Diego Rivera, revolutionary Mexican artist and activist. Together, they formulated the ‘Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art’. Trotsky, in exile and hunted by Stalin’s agents, was the main author, Breton and Diego its signatories.

The manifesto was a call to arms, pens and brushes, addressed to radical artists and writers. It denounced fascism and Stalinism, two dictatorships suffocating artistic expression as they were drowning workers’ opposition in blood. It was also a comment on the role of art and culture in class-based society.

But what had brought these people together at this particular moment? This was a time of extreme turmoil, the world on the brink of a second global war. The international capitalist economy was in severe crisis. Fascism had risen to power in Italy, Portugal, Germany – and Spain, where the revolution had been recently defeated. Mass uprisings had taken place in France, the US, China and around the globe.

Joseph Stalin was consolidating his grip on power in Russia, with show trials dispatching revolutionary socialists and other militants to forced labour camps in their hundreds of thousands. The ruling Stalinist bureaucracy and its ‘Communist International’ were tightening their control on the so-called ‘communist’ parties around the world. In Spain that had meant playing a consciously counterrevolutionary role, betraying the workers and peasants in the socialist and anarchist movements.

In 1938, Leon Trotsky and other revolutionary socialists launched the Fourth International – in recognition that Stalin’s Third (Communist) International would never again play a revolutionary role. This was a time to take sides. Any activist worthy of the name would have to ask themself: Do I support capitalism, Stalinism, or those fighting both?

The Stalinist bureaucracy around the world forced artists, writers and workers into a cultural straitjacket – see ‘Twin pincers of counterrevolution’ (page 10).

Breaking with Stalin and the ‘communist’ parties, however, involved the loss of powerful patronage, as they controlled a huge apparatus and influence over the intellectual scenes of many countries.

The manifesto

‘Towards a Free Revolutionary Art’ was completed on 25 July 1938 and published in the autumn edition of the New York literary magazine ‘Partisan Review’ over the signatures of Diego Rivera and André Breton. It is reprinted in the collection of Trotsky’s writings ‘Art and Revolution’. In his 1953 essay collection ‘La Clé des Champs’ (published in English as ‘Free Rein’) Breton explains that Trotsky was the main contributor.

The wide-ranging manifesto outlined the crisis facing civilisation – not only the approaching world war, but generally. Against this backdrop, the position of artists and scientists was intolerable as they were shackled to the requirements of the various ruling classes and elites.

The manifesto opposed the abstract idea that art could somehow be neutral in a class-based society. ‘Neutrality’, in fact, would mean the continuation of the status quo. It would mean the retention of capitalism, a class-based society – or Stalinism, an increasingly unequal and dictatorial system, albeit based on a nationalised, planned economy.

Therefore “true art is unable not to be revolutionary, not to aspire to a complete and radical reconstruction of society. This it must do, were it only to deliver intellectual creation from the chains which bind it, and to allow all humankind to raise itself to those heights which only isolated geniuses have achieved in the past. We recognise that only the social revolution can sweep clean the path for a new culture. If, however, we reject all solidarity with the bureaucracy now in control of the Soviet Union, it is precisely because, in our eyes, it represents not communism but its most treacherous and dangerous enemy.”

The manifesto explained the role artists could play in exposing the real nature of these systems. It rejected controls on artistic expression: “In the realm of artistic creation, the imagination must escape from all constraint and must under no pretext allow itself to be placed under bonds… and we repeat our deliberate intentions of standing by the formula: complete freedom for art.”

In the years immediately after the Russian revolution, Trotsky was one of the main organisers of the new workers’ state. He consistently defended the need for artistic freedom. Again, the manifesto touched on the attitude a genuinely democratic workers’ state should take: “If, for the better development of the forces of material production, the revolution must build a socialist regime with centralised control, to develop intellectual creation an anarchist regime of individual liberty should from the first be established. No authority, no dictation, not the least trace of orders from above!”

Artists of the world, unite!

It was not, however, simply an analysis of the situation at the time. This was a manifesto, a call to action. So it included a section on to how to build this international movement.

“We know very well that thousands upon thousands of isolated thinkers and artists are today scattered throughout the world, their voices drowned out by the loud choruses of well-disciplined liars. Hundreds of small local magazines are trying to gather youthful forces about them, seeking new paths and not subsidies. Every progressive tendency in art is destroyed by fascism as ‘degenerate’. Every free creation is called ‘fascist’ by the Stalinists. Independent revolutionary art must now gather its forces for the struggle against reactionary persecution.”

The manifesto is a remarkably succinct treatise on the relationship between art, class-based society and dictatorship. Although set in a particular period of acute worldwide crisis, it also serves as a general Marxist approach to art and culture.

Its publication was followed by the setting up of an embryonic revolutionary artists’ organisation, ‘Fiari’ (la Fédération Internationale de l’Art Révolutionnaire Indépendant – the International Federation for Independent Revolutionary Art). The potential was there, but in the polarised political situation immediately preceding the Second World War, Fiari was unable to gain ground and build a mass presence.

Towards an artists’ international

With the 80th anniversary of the publication of the Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art approaching, it is high time to starting outlining the sort of modern manifesto and independent artists’ movement needed today. Bad Art is an attempt to contribute towards the first steps in this direction. There are similarities and also differences between today’s situation and that in 1938. But most important is for artists and workers to link up internationally, to discuss the way forward and begin to fight for it.

The world was hurtling towards another devastating world war in 1938, with grave consequences for culture – and even civilisation itself, as graphically outlined in the manifesto.

“We can say without exaggeration that never has civilisation been menaced so seriously as today. The Vandals, with instruments which were barbarous, and so comparatively ineffective, blotted out the culture of antiquity in one corner of Europe. But today we see world civilization, united in its historic destiny, reeling under the blows of reactionary forces armed with the entire arsenal of modern technology. We are by no means thinking only of the world war that draws near. Even in times of ‘peace’ the position of art and science has become absolutely intolerable.

“In the contemporary world we must recognise the ever more widespread destruction of those conditions under which intellectual creation is possible. From this follows of necessity an increasingly manifest degradation not only of the work of art but also of the especially artistic ‘personality’.”

We are not on the threshold of world war today. But devastating regional wars rage in the Middle East and North Africa, including direct Western imperialist intervention. In today’s global capitalism, wars in one part of the world have a direct effect in other parts, including Europe, with terror attacks, the refugee crisis and so on.

Art is not under the iron cudgel of fascism in the West. But there is a deepening crisis in the state of culture under this rotten, senile capitalist system.

Just as Trotsky gave big importance to the role of artists and writers in the revolutionary struggle to change society, so Bad Art strives to do the same today.

We need to start to outline a programme that can unite artists today. In the first edition of Bad Art, in 2016, we proposed three key demands – access, freedom and organisation – as a framework to help develop the discussion. As networks and links with others grow, artists will need to start developing a more detailed programme – a manifesto for today.

We believe this will need to include demands for collective ownership and democratic control of access to art and the means of creating it. This includes museums, galleries, historical works – and investment in public workshop, rehearsal, performance and exhibition facilities. The question of collective ownership touches every question that faces artists, including the use of public space and cost of materials. If workers and artists do not own the art world, it is not ours to use.

In every area that Bad Art’s supporters work, we aim to develop demands and strategies linked with improving the concrete conditions we face. Art for many is not a hobby, it’s a vocation, it’s a livelihood – so why should we work for free?

All these questions need tying together in a modern manifesto for free, revolutionary art. We invite you to study the past with us, in order to help determine the future. We need, above all, to win artists today to the idea that capitalism offers no solutions to humanity’s problems, and that our destiny is bound up with that of the working-class movement.

After all, real art is always revolutionary by its very nature. Genuine art will oppose tyranny in all its forms, be that from big business, the state, organised religion, or anything else – but above all, the dictatorship of the capitalist system which dominates world and human relations, materially and spiritually.

In doing so, revolutionary art, as Trotsky argued, should defend the historic conquests of art and culture against the threat posed to them by the decay and degeneration of the old world. Revolutionary artists will be to the forefront of the struggle for a new society: a socialist society.

Do you remember Dragon’s Lair, the 1980s sword and sorcery arcade game featuring amazing, hand-drawn animation by none other than legendary animator Don Bluth? Well, guess what. Don Bluth is back and he wants to make a Dragon’s Lair movie. Just donate to his Kickstarter campaign to help get the movie off the ground.

If that doesn’t appeal to you, how about Super Troopers? Remember that 2002 comedy? Well, guess what? There’s an IndieGoGo campaign to make Super Troopers 2.

If that doesn’t appeal to you, then how do you feel about the hip-hop stylings of B.o.B? Well if you hop over to GoFundMe, you can help B.o.B raise the funds necessary build his own satellite so he can prove, once and for all, that the Earth is flat. He’s already 0.6% of the way towards reaching his goal!

Digital crowdfunding websites date back at least as far as 2003, when ArtistShare was founded. And the term “crowdfunding” dates back to 2006. But in the past few years crowdfunding has become a staple in the arts and entertainment. These campaigns aren’t confined to the arts. But within the artistic sphere it’s seen as a new way to bypass the restrictions that come with working through the major music labels, Hollywood studios, and the like.

By this point, however, crowdfunding is itself big business. And we should always be wary when big tech companies promise new technical solutions to the problems of capitalism. We’ve been through this before.

The promise of crowdfunding

The rise of the internet has made it easier to access a wide variety of art and entertainment. But, under capitalism, this has been a two-sided development. While the internet has made distribution of art easier, it hasn’t had a comparable impact on art production. You can potentially download, stream, or share a movie for free, but that doesn’t change the cost of making one.

Crowdfunding presents itself as a solution to this problem. This time the internet is being used to make it easier to produce art, rather than just easier to view it. Crowdfunding websites are basically online fundraising programs. But their online nature means you have potential access to a much wider audience than you’d get with a bake sale. This can allow artists to collect a very large number of small donations that can seriously add up.

In theory, it allows artists to break free from the pressures of working for a big corporation. Filmmakers can have an easier time working outside the Hollywood system while musicians can operate independently of the major labels. And, in the area where crowdfunding has been strongest, video game designers can create high-quality games without relying on the “big three” of Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.

Crowdfunding also presents the making of art as a way to bring back artistic integrity. The big companies that dominate the entertainment industry are interested only in the bottom line. Any concern for the quality of the art they produce is incidental. But the fans actually care about the art. With crowdfunding, the fans are put in control, the profit motive is taken out, and the artist can work with the art in mind. In theory.

In practice, crowdfunding does allow for the creation of art that big businesses would otherwise be unwilling to invest in. But these gains come with their own costs, limits, and complications.

The Amanda Palmer affair

The possibilities, and problems, of crowdfunding as a means of promoting independent artists became clarified in 2012, through an incident involving the singer Amanda Palmer. Palmer had been half of the punk-cabaret duo Dresden Dolls. The Dresden Dolls, and Palmer’s initial solo career, were managed by the Warner Music subsidiary Roadrunner Records, and Palmer’s increasing frustration with the label’s parasitic relationship with artists lead to her definitively breaking from the label in 2009.

In 2012, when Palmer was preparing a new solo album as ‘Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra’, she turned to Kickstarter to crowdfund the new album, an accompanying book and a national concert tour. In addition to soliciting donations, she asked fans at each stop of her tour to play string and horn parts alongside her and her band, promising “we will feed you beer, hug/high-five you up and down (pick your poison), give you merch, and thank you mightily.”

As Palmer presented it, this wasn’t just a means to fund a new album. It was an entirely new paradigm, doing away with the cutthroat music industry in favor of a friendly, collaborative, community and fan-based approach to making art. In a promotional video for her Kickstarter campaign she famously held up signs declaring “this is the future of music,” “this is how we fucking do it,” and “we are the media.”

And the Kickstarter campaign was successful. Some might say too successful.

At the time, it was the most successful crowdfund in history, the first Kickstarter campaign to break $1 million. When that news came out, Palmer looked less like a plucky underdog, and more like a big-time celebrity. And paying musicians with “beer and hugs” came off less like a bunch of friends teaming up to put on a show, and a lot more like exploitation. Much like the exploitation Palmer herself had faced working for Roadrunner records.

The music industry has long been plagued by a set-up where lesser-known musicians are expected to perform free for “exposure.” And if this was the “future of music” as Palmer presented it, it wasn’t a future working musicians would look forward to.

The backlash was swift. Raymond M Hair Jr – president of the American Federation of Musicians, one of the unions in the US and Canada – criticised Palmer. He said “playing is work and there’s a value associated with it, and that value ought to be respected.” The Musicians Union of Seattle Local 76-493 was less diplomatic, sending out angry tweets saying “hugs don’t pay rent” and “MUSICIANS BEWARE! Grand THEFT Orchestra wants your services for free. Will pay hugs and kisses.”

In the heat of this backlash, Palmer backtracked and agreed to pay the musicians. But only after attempting to defend herself in a way that made things worse. Initially she wrote an open letter to one of her critics declaring: “This isn’t about money. For me, this is about freedom. And about choices.” Only after this open letter intensified the backlash did she agree to pay her workers.

For all the backlash, Amanda Palmer is no corporate capitalist. A year before, she had performed for free for crowds at the Occupy Wall Street encampment, as well as at smaller Occupy encampments in Boston, Oakland, Seattle and other cities. Her Kickstarter campaign seems like an honest attempt at bypassing a notoriously awful music industry.

Nonetheless, from her own humble beginnings, Palmer should have known better than to plan a tour where some of the artists get paid – even if it is only enough to subsist during the tour – while others don’t. If she and the touring artists and crew were in the budget, then the local session artists should have been too. If she thought the budget would not meet them, she could have planned to do without.

But the underlying problem is that crowdfunding itself, like many other technological ‘fixes’ for the evils of capitalism, was never going to be up to the task.

The reality of crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is not collective ownership: it keeps production, and any resulting profits, in private hands. But its appeal is that it appears to democratise an aspect of the production process. Traditionally, the initial capital for production is put forward by the capitalists themselves. Under crowdfunding, more and more of this seed capital takes the form of donations from consumers.

But by putting the burden of raising initial capital on the fans, a crowdfunding project has to already have fans to succeed. Chris Roberts, the creator of Star Citizen, was already an established video game designer, having designed Wing Commander in the 1990s. Similarly, Amanda Palmer was as successful as she was because she already built up a large fan base through her time working for a major label. Most struggling artists don’t have that luxury.

Since the Amanda Palmer controversy, crowdfunding has become a lot more widespread, but it hasn’t become the “future of music” like Palmer expected. The artistic medium that has made the biggest use of crowdfunding is video games, with Star Citizen raising over $172 million. In music, no artist since Amanda Palmer has been able to break $1 million.

Star Citizen faced its own controversies with constant delays in getting the game out and a buggy end-product that failed to justify the investment. Crowdfunding of video games has allowed a number of smaller gaming companies to compete with bigger companies, but it has not challenged the profit system which keeps many products bland and most artists poor.

It we look at movies, the most successful crowdfunding project has been the 2014 movie Veronica Mars, which raised over $5 million. Veronica Mars was based on a TV show that aired on US networks UPN and The CW from 2004 to 2007. The class-conscious teen detective show developed a cult following, but got notoriously screwed over by the producers, leading its cancellation after the third season.

In the world of network TV, Veronica Mars was an underdog. But most aspiring filmmakers never get their own network TV shows in the first place.

This is what most of the big crowdfunding projects are like. In addition to Veronica Mars, the Super Troopers sequel and the Dragon’s Lair movie are both tied to very successful preexisting properties. Among the other big crowdsourced films are passion projects by big Hollywood celebrities like Zach Braff, Adam Carolla, and Spike Lee.

One partial exception to this is documentary films. In this case, a few successful crowdfunding campaigns have been built simply on the topic of the documentary. A lot still rely on previous marketing by big corporations, focusing on fan cultures or topics that have large fan cultures.

But some political documentaries have been made by appealing to the supporters of their causes. This includes good and bad causes. Citizen Koch, an exposé of the right-wing billionaire Koch brothers, was barely able to scrape by through a Kickstarter campaign. Meanwhile the right-wing Irish filmmakers Ann McElhinney and Phellim McAleer have already raised $2 million on IndieGoGo for an anti-abortion documentary.

To see all of the worst aspects of crowdfunding, you need look no further than the 2016 movie Range 15, an action comedy about soldiers fending off a zombie apocalypse. To date, this is IndieGoGo’s fifth-highest crowdfunded film.

But it wasn’t initiated by any artist, aspiring or otherwise. The movie originated from the companies Ranger Up and Article 15 Clothing, both of which specialise in selling military-themed clothing to veterans. The CEOs of the two companies appear in the movie playing themselves, as do a number of prominent military figures. The crowdfunding money came primarily from the veterans who purchase clothing from the companies.

Hollywood has come under fire in recent years for its willingness to accept big donations from the military in exchange for adopting a pro-military stance. Now, thanks to crowdfunding, the establishment can produce flat-out military propaganda and let veterans foot the bill.

Freedom or necessity?

Of course, not everyone using crowdfunding is trying to cheat us like this. Most campaigns are still small, struggling artists, with no hope of the financial success of the big firms and no desire to construct enormous profit machines. And some people even use crowdfunding campaigns for basic necessities during times of crisis.

Plenty of ordinary working and unemployed people increasingly rely on crowdfunding to raise money for medical treatment, or preventing lenders from foreclosing on their homes. And this necessity-based crowdfunding has made its way into the world of art as well.

The Amanda Palmer affair drew attention to the problem of artists being expected to work for free, but it didn’t create that problem. And if you’re a struggling musician who’s expected to play for free, crowdfunding campaigns can be the only way to survive. In this sense, you might say that Amanda Palmer was a victim of dialectics. The unexpected quantitative success of her crowdfunding campaign resulted in a qualitative change in the character of that campaign.

While the big crowdfunding projects come from companies like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, another rising company is Patreon, which orients much more towards these struggling artists. While Kickstarter and Indiegogo focus on one-time targeted campaigns, Patreon focuses on collecting recurring donations for ongoing projects. Instead of individual movies, video games, and albums, Patreon funds podcasts, blogs, webcomics, and online video series. Most of these projects are things that would normally be free, and the artists depend on the donations to be able to continue making art for a living.

The most financially successful Patreon project is Chapo Trap House, a political comedy podcast loosely associated with the Democratic Socialists of America. The podcast currently makes $91,490 per month, but most artists make much less. The total amount of money raised on Patreon per year by all of its creators is still less than the $172 million Star Citizen raised on Kickstarter in one go. For many of the artists who rely on Patreon, the resulting donations are the difference between being able to have a career as an artist or being trapped in their day job.

Even on this side of things, the result of crowdfunding has not been the promised unleashing of artistic potential. Because crowdfunding is a necessity for these artists, more and more of their time is devoted to marketing. And more and more of their money. Podcasts and YouTube videos increasingly end with appeals to donate on Patreon. And since donations are voluntary, artists often make special deals where the highest donating patrons can have some say in the content.

But the biggest exploiter here isn’t the artists, or the big donators – but Patreon itself. In December of 2017, Patreon announced a restructuring of its payment process. This includes imposing a flat fee on donations which will particularly affect donators who make a large number of small donations to different things they like. Patreon says the change means a higher proportion of each pledge will end up with the artist – but the change could also reduce the overall number of donors each artist gets. Meanwhile, Patreon makes more money on its presumably higher number of low-value donations. Once again, the seemingly collaborative process of crowdfunding is used to maximise corporate profit.

An ‘accidental experiment with real communism’?

At the time of the Amanda Palmer affair, the New Yorker produced an article that pinned the blame on Palmer’s vision of “art supported by interested communities, workers who can show up for some reason other than pure need.” The article described this vision as a cynical ploy that supposedly “resembles an accidental experiment with real communism.” And it warned of the wider implications by asking “what is the fate of art after private property is done away with? Will people keep making it? Will they keep reproducing, marketing, and distributing it?”

But the problem with crowdfunding is its capitalist character: it tries to create “art supported by interested communities” without taking the resources needed to produce that art into collective ownership. Most of the problems with crowdfunded art are problems that are inherent to art under capitalism. Struggling artists have had to beg friends and fans for funding long before crowdfunding existed. And successful arts businesses have been finding ways to maximise profits at the expense of workers and consumers for as long as they have existed.

The problem isn’t with the vision, but crowdfunding’s failure to meet it. That requires real system change, not just a technical fix.

Unions representing artists need to fight back against big businesses’ attempts to screw them over, whether through crowdfunding or not. Beyond that, we need to fight for a massive increase in public and arts funding. And to pay for it, we need to take the banks, public services and big corporations into public ownership under the democratic control and management of workers and users.

This could allow the free time and access to facilities for everyone who wants to engage in the arts, and end the distorting influence of the profit-driven big entertainment firms. This is how we can actually achieve the goal that crowdfunding only promises.

George Martin Fells Brown writes software for a living and plays trombone and dances in his spare time.

]]>http://badartworld.net/index.php/2018/01/23/is-crowdfunding-the-future-of-art/feed/0#BadArtWorldTour a big success at a time of growing fermenthttp://badartworld.net/index.php/2018/01/15/badartworldtour-big-success/
http://badartworld.net/index.php/2018/01/15/badartworldtour-big-success/#commentsMon, 15 Jan 2018 06:21:37 +0000http://badartworld.net/?p=1953Global political ferment, a consequence of the financial crisis of 2007-08, is increasingly reflected in the arts. And it provides the backdrop for the Bad Art project’s celebration of the centenary of the Russian revolution, linked to the struggles of today. Bad Art editor JAMES IVENS reports.

Uprisings against the status quo like Brexit – and, in a distorted way, the election of Donald Trump – have caused much soul-searching in the arts establishment. Literary circles agonise over “the role of the writer” in articles and meetings, and ask if writing alone is an act of resistance. Of course, writing can be political – although you can’t write Trump out of office. However, this questioning is part of growing agitation in the arts, and more organised discussion of politics in these middle and upper layers. Jacobin, a prominent left-wing journal in the US, considers culture a key area; it has a national reading group organiser. Even the London Review of Books is encouraging subscribers to form reading groups.

“Postmodernism is dead,” said the Times Literary Supplement in June. “What comes next?” Marxists will not be surprised by this observation. As a school of thought and art, postmodernism is the embodiment of Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” rudderlessness, which is not to say that any given movement in art has no value. But the social contradictions capitalism declared resolved 28 years ago are back, and back big. In that TLS article, the academic Alison Gibbons explains that the era of postmodernism “rejected grand narratives, including those of religion, the concept of progress, and of history itself.” Authors today are joining the search for answers following the global financial shock from August 2007 and its snowballing consequences: “This new literature can, in good faith, examine complex and ever-shifting crises – of racial inequality, capitalism and climate change – to which it is easy to close one’s eyes.”

Easy for some. For most, the savagery of capitalist society is too present to ignore. The 2017 wave of revelations about sexual abuse by the powerful began in the entertainment industry. Many victims of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and Louis CK were silent at first, not least because these men had the power to launch or crash their careers. And November marked three years since the floodgates opened on rape allegations against Bill Cosby.

In Britain, the women’s committee of entertainment union Equity has campaigned for some time against misogynistic audition practices. Directors, and people claiming to be directors, demand in breakdowns (actor job listings) that women commit to full nudity before even seeing the script. They use degrading language in breakdowns, hold castings in their private residences, and ask invasive personal questions, often not pertinent to the role. Following the latest scandals, the union has launched its own investigation into sexual harassment in the industry.

In October 2016, police broke up a street theatre performance in Santos, Brazil, arresting one of the actors. The subject of the show was police violence. Performing it was the Trupe Olho da Rua (Eye of the Street Troupe), continuing Brazil’s tradition of using participative theatre in mass assemblies and street meetings as part of working-class political discussion. Brazil has had a mini-boom in grassroots resistance in the arts: the ‘saraus das periferias’, cultural events thrown by residents of the impoverished city suburbs. They are not just a relief from the tedium of poverty, or a platform for the voices of the poor and oppressed, although both are important functions. They have also become a site of direct struggle against austerity, with victorious campaigning by periferia inhabitants against cuts to sarau funding.

Defending the right to take part in the arts as artist, audience or both is a basic class demand in any country. In Scotland, West Lothian council, with a minority Labour administration backed by the Tories, is planning £73 million of cuts in its next budget. High on the list is the instrumental music service which provides free lessons for all the county’s school students. South of the border, Arts Council England has lost around £267 million from its annual budget since 2010 and calculates that local government has cut arts investment by a further £236 million. That’s half a billion pounds a year.

As with all austerity, it hits hardest those already struggling most: working-class artists, young artists, women, black and Asian people and so on. In the eight years from 2007, London not only lost titans of live music like the Astoria and 12 Bar Club, but 35% of its grassroots music venues, which give stage time to new acts, according to a Greater London Authority report. The numbers in all areas of the arts go on and on this way.

Of course, austerity is far from capitalism’s only distorting influence. Artworks, and auctionable fine art in particular, are status symbols for the jet-setting plutocrat as much as safe stores of value in a turbulent economy. Art is also a propaganda medium for the capitalist system. Sometimes indirect, prettifying or distracting from the way things are, or vilifying oppressed groups in passing. Sometimes direct, as with the portrayal of Leon Trotsky as a bloodthirsty, sexist gangster in the new eight-part drama ‘Trotsky’ on Russia’s Channel One. And all the sewage of bigotry and violence that comes with class society impacts the arts as well, as Weinstein and co have reminded us.

However, the struggle to free the arts to be themselves, to tackle social problems if they wish instead of reinforcing them, or just to exist for their own sake regardless of profit value, cannot be separated from the struggle for working-class access to the arts. In fact today, more than at any time in history, the figure of the artist is found in the ranks of the working class. There has been folk art in every form of society but earlier class society had a tendency to restrict ‘fine art’ to specialists maintained by patronage, buttressing the prestige of the aristocracy and church. Industrial techniques of mass production and reproduction brought art into the home of every worker, and the tools to make it within reach as well.

Young people in particular often seek artistic routes to articulate their anger at the system. Is there any better expression of young, black, working-class passion than grime? It’s no accident that Stormzy and others created the #Grime4Corbyn banner. But capitalism also frustrates the artistic aspirations it promises to satisfy, through the market’s distortion of content and financial limits on who can participate, both compounded by austerity. The internet has deepened this contradiction, creating a ubiquitous means of mass communication and a wild-west market dominated by tech monopolies and big advertisers.

We cannot tell all the untold stories if workers, the poor and oppressed do not have the free time, training, funding and facilities to participate. And these interlinked social and economic struggles cannot be separated from the general struggle for a socialist world. A world where, as Karl Marx imagined, “society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind.”

So in 2015, members of the Committee for a Workers’ International launched the Bad Art project. Bad Art aims to find a road to those young people who see the arts as their only outlet; to those working in the arts, abused and restrained by the social and economic ills of capitalism; to all workers unable to take part in the arts as makers or spectators as much as they desire. We want artists, in the broadest sense, to bring their energy and talent to the workers’ movement. CWI members also hope to win the best of them to revolutionary Marxist ideas.

Bad Art has produced two magazines since its launch. The first laid out what we consider to be the three key campaign areas in the arts: access, freedom and organisation. The second looked at the effect of the Russian revolution on the arts. It linked 1917 to struggles today – like Trump’s attack on National Endowment for the Arts funding – and carried brief reports on fightbacks, such as art school occupations and a threatened strike by reality TV contestants in Sweden. To start the process of connecting artists and revolutionaries, Bad Art supporters in 15 cities across three continents put on events between September and December celebrating the centenary of the Russian revolution. We called it the Bad Art World Tour.

Poetry and rap were a big feature of the tour. At the event ‘It’s Time for a Revolution’ in Kassel, Germany, socialist rapper Holger Burner performed between political speeches while graffiti artists painted live art on the walls. Holger later joined fellow working-class rappers Disorder and Kid Pex at ‘A World to Win’ in Vienna. At Leicester’s ‘Protest Showcase’, young local poets talked about their experiences of sexual harassment, the nightmare of living on benefits, and persecution by the immigration system. The Bad Art sarau in São Paulo included Tatiana Minchoni’s poetry.

In Glasgow, Hailey Madison Slate’s poem ‘My American Education’ asked: “Why do you draw so much if not to sell out galleries? Why do you write so much if not to conjure up the next major franchise? Why do you sing so much if not to drop the next platinum album? … My American Education said create! As long as your brush strokes don’t ask too many questions. Colour inside the lines so as not to draw attention to the fact that they are fixed unfairly. And if you’re writing, mind you choose your words carefully so you never reflect your frustration at this constant desire for beauty over message.”

Elsewhere on the tour, Bad Art’s visual artists ignored these warnings. At the exhibition in Skipton, Yorkshire, some artists were political, others simply liberated. Militant cartoonist Alan Hardman’s muscular line drawings mixed with Peter Harris’s surrealist collages and works by other left-wing artists from the north of England. At Subversive Action in Melbourne, work by Bradley Cochrane looked at the restrictive gender roles and categories defended by class society. Paintings, pencil drawings and more covered the walls in Glasgow. In Stockholm, drawings by young artist Morteza Jamshidi depicted his escape from Afghanistan.

A short film showed oyster mushrooms consuming Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom – Jane Lawson in Leicester. In Stockholm, Afrang Nordlöf Malekian’s video installation looked at capital punishment in Iran. There were live bands at many of the events, and the tour will end with a feminist metal gig in Liège, Belgium. In Barcelona, ‘1917 Then and Now’ focused on the lessons of the Russian revolution for the mass movement in Catalonia. Mixed-discipline performances, including live sculpture, synthesised music, body popping and breakdancing, examined the various stages of struggle in a revolutionary process, with audience participation. The culmination was a cathartic defacement and smashing of a carving of Joseph Stalin.

The world tour events have attracted artists and audiences new to revolutionary ideas. Many of Bad Art’s activists come from the Committee for a Workers’ International, a global Marxist organisation fighting for world socialism. But there are others involved who agree with our broad aims, and we hope many more going forward. We are keen to make connections with other groups – in the United States, for instance, we have made links with the Socialist Artists Alliance.

So the world tour, we hope, is a small beginning in the process of uniting artists and workers in struggle internationally. In the future, as the forces of socialism grow towards a mass, revolutionary international, we are confident that artists will march behind a banner inscribed with Trotsky’s slogan of 1938: “The independence of art – for the revolution. The revolution – for the complete liberation of art!”

James Ivens is part of the Bad Art editorial team. Contact james@badartworld.net.

On Saturday the 18th of November our culture collective held its first event called “Art in Times of Crisis”. It aimed to, in part, commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the Russian Revolution and to discuss how the lessons of those events can help artists organize and resist now in the current global political and economic crises.

The event opened with a debate discussing these questions with some invited quests starting things off. Diane Padial spoke about her experience with Sarau Do Binho, one of many poetry recital groups currently happening in the peripheries of São Paulo, and the struggle entailed in making these events happen; Carolina Teixeira Itzá, who is a graffiti artist and also part of the collective Fala Guerreira and finally our very our Tatiana Minchoni who presented BadArt, what it is about, what the world tour is and what we are trying to achieve with the formation of this collective here in Brasil and Latin America. The discussion then slowly transformed into a Sarau (poetry reading) where people read poems they had written or had brought with them.

The event was a great success with around 30 people attending throughout the night. They where from diverse backgrounds with some from different left organizations and from all over São Paulo. The event itself was hosted in Espaço Cultural Mané Garrincha that is a left wing open cultural space in the centre of São Paulo that has rooms for discussion, marxist study groups, events and a marxist library. We sold food and beer and the events carried on late into the night. This was an important start for our collective and has began a dialogue with artists, writers and poets from São Paulo.
Tatiana Minchoni

]]>http://badartworld.net/index.php/2017/11/28/art-in-times-of-crises-sao-paulo-brazil-badartworldtour/feed/0Russia’s TV drama ‘Trotsky’: History? Haven’t heard of ithttp://badartworld.net/index.php/2017/11/23/russias-tv-drama-trotsky-history-havent-heard-of-it/
http://badartworld.net/index.php/2017/11/23/russias-tv-drama-trotsky-history-havent-heard-of-it/#commentsThu, 23 Nov 2017 18:02:05 +0000http://badartworld.net/?p=1931The latest smear on the Russian revolution comes from Russia itself. Russia’s Channel One is broadcasting an eight-part drama on the life of Leon Trotsky. It depicts him as a sexist, bloodthirsty gangster. It portrays the countless, nameless, self-sacrificing worker-revolutionaries who fought the dictatorships of the tsar and the capitalists as drunken idiots. Lev Sosnovsky reviews ‘Trotsky’. Translated by Philip Snyder.

“He was a person with great vitality and boundless energy. If we were to look for an actor to portray Trotsky, the only one who could play the role really well would be Kirk Douglas (laughs). Douglas has that drive that was typical of grandfather… He had an absolute faith that socialism would determine the future of mankind. He had no doubt. But the clock of history moves more slowly than one would like. A human life is very short compared to the historical cycles.”

Writers for the new drama ‘Trotsky’, which premiered on Russia’s Channel One for the 100th anniversary of the Russian revolution, made one significant mistake.

That is, they forgot to include a disclaimer – like the one often seen at the beginning or end of films – indicating a certain separation from reality. Something like: “This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.”

The series may have been more bearable with that in mind, perhaps even overpowering the urge to pick up something heavy and smash a hole through the screen.

In fact, this series plays out the Stalinist version of Trotsky’s death, as described by the Soviet press in August of 1940: “Trotsky died in a Mexican hospital from a fractured skull – the result of an attempted assassination by one of his closest associates…

“Entangled in his own networks, Trotsky reached the limit of human degradation before being killed by one of his own supporters…

“Trotsky became a victim of his own intrigues, betrayals, treasons, and atrocities…” And we are shown, step by step, this series of so-called “intrigues, betrayals, treasons, and atrocities” right up to the final blow with an ice axe. Even the assassin is portrayed in a sympathetic light as a young journalist.

Unfortunately, we can’t subject this series to the rigours of historical criticism due to the absence of any history as such in it. Any consistent approach at historical criticism would be a voluminous effort, and for that there are already better resources in existence.

Indeed, for those who wish to learn the real history, it would be best to forget the series as any sort of historical record and read, for example, Trotsky’s autobiography, ‘My Life’, or any of the serious literature about the revolution.

If the series remains an object of criticism, then, in the words of Karl Marx, it is “just as the criminal, though below the level of humanity, yet remains an object of the executioner.” Rather than reflect any real historical events, the series only reflects ideas and fears that modern ideologues would like to impose upon us.

Despite the fact that, as already mentioned, this series is taking place in a parallel universe, it can’t be called a work of fantasy.

As a popular Russian internet critic says, it is not “fantasy,” but “fantasia” – that is, a superficial entry into the popular genre, the plot of which falls apart at the first look. Characters appear and disappear as deus ex machina – or, if you prefer, like a Jack in the Box – solely at the whim of the authors, forcing the viewers to ask themselves: “wait, what was that now?”

The problem is that the writers are attempting to tackle a subject they don’t understand. They see the Petrograd Soviet, the Bolshevik Party, the Military Revolutionary Committee, and even the revolution itself as mere words, completely devoid of meaning.

For example, the drama’s bizarro-Lenin reproaches bizarro-Trotsky for having seized power for the party. But we are never shown the context behind this exchange, or the party itself for that matter.

Instead, we are shown bizarro-Lenin talking in front of a congress about the need to overthrow Plekhanov, but the viewer will remain completely bewildered – who are all these people? Who is Plekhanov, how did he get to his position of power, and why should he be removed?

A little dirty money from foreign embassies, a pair of charismatic leaders, a crowd of drunken sailors – all this, according to the writers, is what a revolution looks like.

In fact, the authors of this series are trying to take us back to a time before the emergence of historical science, when history was depicted as a chain of actions by ‘great men’ – princes, kings, emperors, or, in this case, one or more revolutionary leaders. Even entire economic classes and nations appear as nothing more than moulding clay in their hands.

All the while, the psychological aspects of the plot are heavily indebted to a sort of pseudo-Freudianism. There are infinite interpretations of the relationship between our hero and the crowd, as well as the interrelationships between sex, violence, death, and revolution.

But this is served with an unambiguously sexist implication. The ‘masses’ are likened to a woman who does not – and by definition cannot – have her own interests. And, therefore, requires an ‘alpha male’ to make all of her decisions for her.

If you’re looking for a story with high political drama and human passions – you would be better off taking in Sartre’s play ‘Dirty Hands’. It may not be playing in Russian theatres, but is widely available in print. And, all in all, it is a much better use of time to learn about dialectics and historical materialism than it is to watch this product of Russian television.

Lenin, at different times in theatre and cinema, has been played by Yuri Kayurov, Alexander Kalyagin, Cyril Lavrov, and Mikhail Ulyanov. Like many of the late Soviet intelligentsia, they treated the Soviet regime very critically. But as artists, they could get over themselves and fully embrace the character they portrayed, creating very memorable performances.

It is a very different experience with the performances of Khabensky and Stychkin as Trotsky and Lenin. They neither rise to the level of their characters, nor hide their antipathy towards them – and, as a result, end up lowering the characters to their own level of mediocrity.

Contrary to the writers’ fervent imagination, Leon Trotsky did not betray his friend, the sailor Nikolai Markin. In fact, news of an assassination attempt on Lenin had summoned Trotsky to Moscow on the eve of Markin’s capture.

Indeed, with no shortage of falsehoods to be had, Markin is also slandered by a portrayal as an eternally drunk lowlife who would extort rubles from passers-by. In actuality, he was an educated worker – an electrician – which was one of the highest qualifications for his time.

Markin joined the Bolshevik Party in 1916, while serving as a non-commissioned officer in the Imperial Navy. He then served in the detachment guarding Lenin and Trotsky during the revolution of 1917, and frequently served as Trotsky’s proxy in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the early Soviet government.

During the Civil War, Markin was the Commissar of the Volga Flotilla, and died, heroically, in battle. As stated on the site of the Penza Museum of Local History: “On 1 October 1918, while conducting reconnaissance on the Kama River, near Pyany Bor, on the gunboat Vanya-Communist, he fell into an artillery ambush (they did not notice the disguised batter from the side of the ship). The ship was sunk. Bold and courageous Markin, who knew no fear, perished with the ship while providing cover fire for the crew members.”

Larissa Reisner, by the way, was more than a ‘glamorous young lady’. She was a journalist, commissar, and scout who repeatedly engaged the Whites in battle. She devoted a few elaborate but piercing lines to Markin:

The destroyers returned to sea long ago,

Like swans, they went south.

For you, the fallen crusaders, for you,

Sent an army of iron-winged blizzards.

Up, up, stiffened Markin!

Ice breaks from bleeding wounds.

Flowing slowly, thick and hot.

Unstoppable, it joins the ocean,

The rebellious blood from your wounds …

Unfortunately, the topic is too taboo for an honest portrayal of the revolution and its leaders to be made today. Working people in Europe and even the United States are beginning to influence politics more and more – with many becoming interested in socialism. And in Russia too, young people are taking an interest in politics and marching in the streets.

The ruling class needs an ideological response to counteract the changing situation, and – with the help of a privileged intelligentsia – they are attempting to find it by smearing the Revolution and its heroes with garbage. As Larissa Reisner once wrote, “…in literature, they don’t fight about plot formation, the beauty of a syllable, the outset, or the denouement – no – they fight, first of all, about politics. Nowhere is the struggle of social forces more acute, brighter, and ruthless, than in art…”

But at times of political upheaval, such anti-propaganda can have an unexpected effect for its creators, prompting people to start looking for the historical truths of ideas, personalities, and the class struggle being represented outside of their television screens.

It’s funny that, as a moral antipode to Leon Trotsky, the writers introduced Ivan Ilyin. The reason why is clear: the heads of Channel One are well aware that this is Putin’s favourite philosopher.

Of course, they forgot to add that this ‘moral authority’ extolled fascism, having found in it a spirit “similar to that of the Russian White movement.” And even in 1948 – after all the horrors of the Second World War – he did not hesitate to write that fascism was right, because it came from a ‘healthy’ national-patriotic feeling, without which people cannot assert their existence or create their own culture.

It bears mentioning that the similarities between fascism and the Russian White Guard were noticed by the real Leon Trotsky, who warned in the 1930s that Hitler was positioning himself as the bourgeoisie’s fighter against socialists, communists and Jews on a European scale; something which impressed Ilyin.

So, Ivan Ilyin is hardly the person to teach us of the ‘humanism’ of Leon Trotsky. And if you really lay the moral responsibility for Holodomor, forced collectivisation, and the gulag on Trotsky, it is reasonable to at least be consistent and lay responsibility on Ivan Ilyin for Babi Yar, Khatyn, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald.

But what am I talking about? This is that “fantasia” mentioned earlier.

Whatever it is – for all past, present and future attempts to paint the revolution as immoral – Leon Trotsky already provided an answer in his essay ‘Their Morals and Ours’:

“Bourgeois evolutionism halts impotently at the threshold of historical society because it does not wish to acknowledge the driving force in the evolution of social forms: the class struggle. Morality is one of the ideological functions in this struggle.

“The ruling class forces its ends upon society and habituates it into considering all those means which contradict its ends as immoral. That is the chief function of official morality. It pursues the idea of the ‘greatest possible happiness’ not for the majority, but for a small and ever-diminishing minority.

“Such a regime could not have endured for even a week through force alone. It needs the cement of morality. The mixing of this cement constitutes the profession of the petty-bourgeois theoreticians, and moralists. They dabble in all colours of the rainbow, but in the final instance remain apostles of slavery and submission.”

]]>http://badartworld.net/index.php/2017/11/23/russias-tv-drama-trotsky-history-havent-heard-of-it/feed/0Bad Art ethos comes to Glasgow – #badartworldtourhttp://badartworld.net/index.php/2017/11/14/badartworldtour-comes-to-glasgow/
http://badartworld.net/index.php/2017/11/14/badartworldtour-comes-to-glasgow/#commentsTue, 14 Nov 2017 21:04:31 +0000http://badartworld.net/?p=1869A founding part of the Bad Art ethos is providing a platform where all artists from all mediums and genres can work together and organise themselves not only locally but internationally. The problems artists face are global, we all suffer the same cuts to funding, the same venue closures, the same gentrification, the same financial barriers to tuition, materials, tools and the time needed to develop our skills. We believe an international approach plays a key role in building a movement that can fight capitalism and its strangulation of the arts. The Bad Art World Tour was set up to facilitate this where ever possible, to connect us all together, to create a dialogue, to create a space where art has the freedom to be itself, whatever genre it falls into regardless of its profit value.

With 17 events in over 15 different countries there has been a mixture of stalls, meetings, theatre performances, live music, art exhibitions, sculpture & spoken word. Its been a huge success so far and a positive first step in uniting artists across the world.

Our Scottish event, held in Glasgow combined a night of live music and spoken word set to the back drop of an art exhibition. It was held at The Old Hairdressers, a quirky wee building with endless rooms and stairs, it had a great laid back vibe and the staff couldn’t have been more helpful. The team work from the beginning set the tone of the evening, the artists, musicians, sound engineer, poet as well as the organisers and the audience all got stuck in and worked together pulling off a fantastic night.

The first thing everyone saw when they walked through the door was the extremely high calibre of art on display. It gave the room movement as people wandered from piece to piece settling into the space. The whole exhibition gave a really special touch to the evening adding a powerful visual to the live performances.(more reports on art and artist below)

Elaine our Bad Art Scotland organiser said a few words about Bad Art and what it’s all about. She talked about how the austerity and cuts that plague the arts in working class communities are global problems. She talked about the Bad Art magazine and the other countries involved in the World Tour inviting people to sign our petition against cuts to the arts and to support our movement.

“We couldn’t have asked for more, every one had a great time, everyone went away happy. The hard work and talent from the artists and musicians was incredible, I can’t thank everyone enough. We had a lot of interest in Bad Art & socialism and will be sending round emails to those who signed our petition with updates and the possibility of holding a meeting. People have already expressed interest in holding another event in West Lothian in the near future. It was a pleasure to work along side such great people, a complete success all round and I’m confident the movement will continue to grow.”

Elaine is a member of Socialist Party Scotland, a cartoonist for the national newspaper and also a musician with her band Culture Tramps.

Philip Stott( National Secretary Socialist Party Scotland): It was a great night, lots of interest in Bad Art and socialism, a fantastic array of talent and a real appetite for change. I’ve been very impressed with what Bad Art has achieved in such a short period of time, the organisation is proving to be an important part of the workers struggle. I’m sure the movement will go on to do great things both politically and artistically.

The Artists involved….

Scott Nisbet

Once everyone had a chance to get a good look at the art and to check out our information stalls about Bad Art, socialism and the Russian revolution, we kicked off the music with an intimate acoustic performance from Scott Nisbet. Scott is a familiar face in the West Lothian music scene, a passionate supporter of Bad Art and we were delighted to hold an information stall at his recent successful EP launch in Bathgate. His EP is called Protest and Hallucinations featuring self penned acoustic songs like ‘You Are Who You Are’ and with an unmistakable deep raw tone to his voice he can create a real connection between himself and the audience. Please go check out his stuff online.

George Anderson

Next up we had the pleasure of hearing George Anderson. Well received, he gave an impressive confident performance of his original acoustic songs. He describes his music as free thinking truth seeking music for the soul and now we know why. George is also a passionate supporter of Bad Art, a cause close to his heart as his daughter works in West Lothian providing access to music and creative resources for disadvantaged kids, but, with the next round of cuts in the area set to be 73 million these types of services have never been under more threat. Through building Bad Art we can set out campaigns and strategies to fight against cuts exactly like these.

Ewan Cruickshanks

Next up we had the brilliantly bizarre Ewan Cruickshanks. From guitar instrumentals, drum machines, looper pedals and techno, to spoken word, comedy anthems and bursts of rap, finishing up perfectly with a love a song. It was beautifully odd and engaging. This is a very brave talented young artist based in Glasgow, find him on facebook, go see his shows, you won’t be disappointed.

Then we had our first debut act of the night. The amazing Hailey Madison Slate had the audience in her hands as she stood up and performed her own poem ‘My American Education’. You could have heard a pin drop and we are delighted to be able to put it in print below. What a talent!

My American Education

by Hailey Madison Slate

Why do you draw so much?

I remember my father asking me between the thresh hold

of my bedroom and the hallway like he didn’t already know the answer.

I come from visionaries I said

What he probably meant to ask was;

why don’t you devote the same amount of care to getting a B in maths as you do to your psychedelic cartoons of crying women with flowers blooming out of their skulls?

Why don’t you put your time to a use the world will better understand? And for gods sake if you’re gonna draw, do it bigger because no one is gonna pay you for the corners of your note book pages.

Why do you draw so much if not to sell out galleries?

Why do you write so much if not to conjure up the next major franchise?

Why do you sing so much if not to drop the next platinum album?

Why do you bother learning languages no one speaks anymore if not to figure out some way to communicate their worth in profit?

Like he meant to say;

The only medium through which to construct any kind of life is through profit. Little girl- why have you forgotten your American Education.

My American Education was red polos and dog-tooth knee length skirts and a big glass building in the middle of campus funded by the patrons who agreed that our access to new Nikons and off Broadway scripts was essential.

My American Education has taught me that the arts were to be built up and protected when I knew the very same thing in someone elses was being hacked apart by the blade of austerity.

My American Education said create! As long as your brush strokes don’t ask too many questions, colour inside the lines so as not to draw attention to the fact that they are fixed unfairly. And if you’re writing, mind you choose your words carefully so you never reflect your frustration at this constant desire for beauty over message.

So to answer your question, I am not forgetful – I am defiant.

My American Education never taught me my history, that my decision to rebel , that the fury and hope of revolution bursts and burns like the flame of a hundred years in everyone who dares to crystalise their questioning in the work of their hands and attempts at reimagining society.

And we will!

Its why we draw so much.

CULTURE TRAMPS

With the show rolling along nicely we moved on to our second debut act of the night. Brand new band Culture Tramps a 3 piece from Edinburgh and West Lothian packed quite a punch playing a powerful 5 song set. Twisted piano and loud guitar with political undertones they instantly captured the crowds attention. For a first gig it was a belter, we look forward to hearing their studio efforts in the near future, check out their facebook page for updates.

LUKE LA VOLPE

Last but by no means least the incredible Luke La Volpe and his fantastic band played a blinding headline show. From the first song they had everyone behind them, playing a modern twist on 50’s and 60’s blues with songs like ‘Your apology burns’ already known to the audience. Luke has a tremendous tone to his voice and a real gift for song writing. Having recently played a sold out EP launch in Edinburgh the only way is up for this new band, 4 thoroughly decent guys, it was an absolute pleasure to have them involved.

Here we have the fantastic Roisin Rourke with her acrylics on canvass.

Next we see Angelene Perry with her fabulous pencil drawings

“When attempting commissions the artist is drawn to the character and individuality of the subject. The works on show celebrate the intricacy and focus. The lines of a face or the decay of a fading flower offer a glimpse of the worlds from which they have emerged. It is in the details of the work that the viewer will be able to speculate on the experience of the subject. The fading sunflower is a continuation of the expressionism of influences like Vincent Van Gogh. The raw humanity of Dorothy Lang’s ‘Migrant Mother’ is also seen in the face of Margaret, a dementia sufferer. The artist (Angelene) has also made the choice to feature and find beauty in the realism of the human condition previously highlighted by such artists such as Lucian Freud and the unforgiving relentlessness of the natural world. In the piece ‘Harvey’ the artist looks at power and patriarchy. This will be developed further in a coming series of work. “

Bad Arts own Lynda Hannah McEwan with her exceptional collection of pencil drawings. Lynda donated a £75 commission voucher to the Bad Art raffle and continues to play an important role both in Bad Art and in Socialist Party Scotland

Lynda McEwan….

“I am a self taught revolutionary artist based in Balloch, I believe art should be accessible to everyone as some of the best work comes from the working classes. I mostly do portraits, a mixture of commissions, fan art, political portraits, pets and landscapes.”

Then we have Penny Sharp displaying a fantastic selection of prints

And welcome to the weird world of Innes Smith

Innes Smith is a Paranormal Investigator with the Scottish Society for Psychical Research and gives presentations on paranormal, fortean and esoteric subjects. He draws his own slides for power point presentations. It gives him time to think about what he is going to say while he’s sketching away on his Wacom tablet.

THE EVIDENCE: Self portrait to accompany introductory waffle

DANIEL: The Messiahs death was calculated as 30AD due to Daniels prophecy (not because Jesus really existed) From a cheery festive talk ‘Christmas Investigated’

MR ROACH LIVES NEXT DOOR: From an SSPR case – A neighbour was accused of astrally projecting into a clients house. (He Wasn’t)

THE PSI FAIRY: The Experimenter effect and the sheeps/goats effect; the curious fact that psi seems to need to be believed to exist.

THE STORM WITCH: An illustration of the storm raising described during the North Berwick Witch trials of 1590. Sailing on sieves and drowning baptised cats is how you do it apparently.

911: An illustration to accompany the distasteful game show challenge during my last talk: whether multiple and startling coincidences during terrorist attacks should be interpreted as ‘conspiracy theory’ or evidence of ‘mass unconscious precognition’. Contestants could bail out by shouting ‘Oh, just a really, really big coincidence’. Nobody wanted to play.